Dead Baby Photos and the Israel/Palestine Conflict

Surprise! Israel and Palestine are at it again, swapping bombs, slaughtering teens, blowing shit up and generally just hating on eachother. And, as always, social media is booming with all the back and forth, tit for tat discussion that has been going on for, well, ever. As long as this conflict has been going on, it's the same back and forth arguments with no end. "Israel is worse than Nazi Germany!". "Palestinians are terrorists!", etc, etc, etc. It gets rather tiresome. It's the same old thing over and over and over. And then, both sides wonder "Why are we not getting the attention we deserve!!!!???". Well, maybe it's because you've been at this for 60 fucking years and it's always the same old garbage and you guys haven't been able to sort it out, and we're all a bit tired of hearing about it because there is not much we can do. It is, quite frankly, easy to tune out this conflict because, quite frankly, the story is getting old and tired. But, of course, it is still an important story because people are dying...mostly Palestinians, but that isn't to say that Israel hasn't faced it's fair share of death. I am not even going to bother arguing for or against anything here. Enough people have researched the issue to death (usually to suit their own predetermined bias) that there will always be someone who will come along, on both/either side that will say, "That's wrong, and you are an idiot!" Well, in some ways, yes, I am, and I have no clue what is true or false anymore. Not all that is said to be false is false, and not all that is said to be true is true.

BUT, BUT, BUT, here is what is making me quite angry at the moment with how social media, particularly the anti-Israel camp (thought the pro-Israel camp does this too) is conducting itself. If I see one more picture of a slaughtered baby with absolutely no source cited, I'm going to scream. Just throwing up a picture of a dead baby that could be a dead child from anywhere there is conflict and declaring that it is the work of Israel is just....wrong. Have children been dying in the conflict over the years? Yes, sadly, and tragically, children on both sides have been a victim. But, really, does tossing up a picture of a dead baby from three years ago, that no one knows where it was taken, really helping anything other than further inflaming an already toxic issue? Constantly, constantly, dead baby pictures, with an angry message that says, "Look what Isra-hell is doing! Wake UP!" or something. Again, I'm not trying to downplay the pain and suffering being felt in that area, but, come on, let's be level headed and rational about this. Find out before you post it what the picture is actually of. I keep seeing pictures of things being blown up that are attributed to today....that happened 3 yrs ago! Why? If you are going to lie about that through pictures, what else are you going to lie about?? Not everything you find on the internet is true folks. You aren't helping your side with these pics. You aren't helping to do anything but make the situation, dare I say....worse!

And, now, it's back to your regularly scheduled tit for tat war. Enjoy! 

High Seas Drama: The Slaughter of Truth by Israel, Turkey, and Pretty Much Everyone Else.

You know what I'm tired of? PR folks thinking that we are all morons.

So, you may have heard about the little incident involving Israels infamous IDF, and the Gaza Flotilla headed to, well, Gaza. Nine people were killed when things went horribly wrong. What exactly happened, we may never know. But, it sure didn't take long for the "spin" to kick in as, again, PR, representatives, politicians, etc. seemingly assured themselves that we are all complete and utter idiots who will just buy anything anyone says as long as they say it enough times.

The event that happened on the Mediterranean was bad enough, but to hear the post event rhetoric has just been excruciatingly painful, and fraught with hypocrisy, over the top exaggeration, confusion, accusations and finger pointing and, for the most part, just out and out crap. Israel says it was doing what it did in self defense, and the people that were dropped onto the ships in international waters were justified in killing 9 people. Turkey's Prime Minister has called the event Turkey's 9/11 after the killings occurred on the Mavi Marmara, a Turkish ship. Turkey's 9/11?? The condemnation from Turkey is understandable and all, but completely hypocritical given their own dismal human rights record. So, as Turkey tries to spin this into the greatest disaster that may have ever happened, Israel is insinuating that these boats were essentially filled with terrorists, they had to act in self defense and the killings were justified. And WORSE, there are claims that there is no humanitarian crisis in the Gaza strip! DAMN YOU ALL! Quit talking to us as if we are complete morons and idiots! Stop with the PR propaganda. It's INSULTING! Let the facts come out, would ya? Let us get a relatively TRUTHFUL understanding of what happened! Don't keep feeding us your well planned, well rehearsed, polished and pretty prefab pablum! Let us find out the truth. I don't believe we will ever know the complete truth, but, as long as we can get all of the PR crud out of the way, we can start to piece together something relatively CLOSE to an unbiased, impartial look at the events. Just spewing the same lines over and over and over and over and over again with the belief that people will just stop questioning and accept what is being spewed out is arrogant and disgusting.

No more propaganda! And that goes for you too, big corporations, governments and special interest groups everywhere. Every time anyone tries to push their biased crap, question it. We are constantly bombarded: The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the war on "terror" in general, the killing of Tamils civilians in Sri Lanka, the crisis in Darfur, the problems in the Gaza strip, the Catholic church sex abuse...oh, the list goes on and on and ON. Toyota has a brand new advertising campaign showing how much the people who build Toyota vehicles LOVE the product they are building and care so much about your safety! It is painful to watch. They are only saying it because they got BAD publicity when they screwed up with their cars. But, they want to turn their image around and protect their "brand". Screw the brand. Protect the people. I don't want to hear about the "brand" anymore. I'm tired of PR. I'm tired of spin. Quit treating us like idiots...you idiots!!!